O.C.'s 'green' fair plagued by policy breaches

County-run environmental fairs unexpectedly soaked up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of staff time and prompted allegations that employees dined on fair revenues and made off with donated gifts, according to Shawn Nelson, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.

Supervisors unanimously and abruptly cancelled the annual fair in February because of the troubling reports, terminating plans for the May 17 event. Earlier this month, supervisors received a completed audit detailing lapses in the program.

County lawyers say the audit is exempt from public disclosure requirements because it deals with personnel issues. Supervisor Todd Spitzer said he's requested a redacted version that the board could consider releasing to the public.

But based on earlier updates of the internal investigation, Nelson confirmed that sweeping violations of county policy took place.

"There were no checks and balances," Nelson said. Accounting was so lax that allegations of employee misuse of vendor funds and gifts cannot be disproven, he said.

The audit comes on the heels of a scathing grand jury report on ethics in county government asserting that "corruption has permeated all levels of the organization." Some supervisors have called the grand jury hyperbolic and Nelson said there is no conclusive evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the green fairs matter.

But the audit continues a string of reports of suspect activity by county employees and a lack of managerial oversight. Nelson readily acknowledged other managerial lapses and said it's important to thoroughly address individual instances.

"There's been a real nasty habit in this county that once something was in the past, we say let's move forward," he said, referring to failures to take corrective action. "But this green fair got totally out of hand. Someone deserves to be disciplined. Someone needs to be held accountable."

A key concern is misused staff time in the county's purchasing office. The fair was overseen by the office, but there was supposed to be no taxpayer expense – any staff time was to be volunteered in off hours or while vacation times was logged.

"It started consuming extraordinary amounts of time," Nelson said. "It was several hundreds of thousands of dollars of staff time."

The fair attracted dozens of vendors and busloads of school children to the county concourse each year since it began in 2010 and received positive reviews in terms of attendance, participation and publicizing environmental awareness. But administration has been a different story. Nelson is questioning why the purchasing office was even handling those duties.

"What the hell do they have to do with running fairs in the plaza?" Nelson said. If any county agency handled the effort, it should have been OC Waste & Recycling, he said.

Complaints from employees that prompted the audit included allegations that employees had usedvendors' booth fees for county staff lunches, that they took donated amusement park tickets and art kits that should have gone to fair participants, and that they won a disproportionate amount of the raffle prizes. Those prizes included Angels tickets, gift cards, a bicycle, and Trader Joes gift baskets.

However, Nelson said there was no way ofdetermining exactly what happened.

"You can't really audit people if there aren't records," said Nelson, who helped launch the audit after an employee detailed allegations to him. "There may have been a staff lunch or two to talk about green fairs" paid for with vendor money.

"If you take cash – even $20 – you have to account for it," he said. "None of it was completely accounted for. But the magnitude of the money involved was not that great. It was the ineptitude. If there's anybody who should know how to account for things, it's the purchasing office."

The head of the office, Purchasing Officer Ron Vienna, and the county executive office declined comment on the audit.

Nelson said that ending the green fair didn't mean core issues had been addressed.

"I'm not satisfied that we've solved the problem," he said. He didn't know if any disciplinary action had been taken with those involved.

Nonetheless, county employee union spokeswoman Jennifer Muir applauded Nelson for speaking out about the alleged abuses.

"Employees need to know that there is follow up when there are employee complaints," said Muir. "I hope this indicates a reversal of years of ignoring employee complaints."

Supervisor Pat Bates said in an emailed statement that rules were not followed in running the green fair. But she was satisfied that the problem was addressed by providing tighter oversight of accounting and money-handling procedures.

"While no fraud was found in the audit, the board did the right thing to cancel this event, and our Internal Audit Department has done its job in finding out what went wrong and how to keep this from happening in the future,” she said.

County Supervisors Janet Nguyen and John Moorlach declined comment on the audit, citing county lawyers' confidentiality determination. Spitzer said Friday he would not comment until he has received and read a redacted version that has been scrubbed of confidential information.

But Moorlach did dispute Muir's claim that the county had long ignored employee complaints, noting that the fraud hotline used to level green fair complaints has been in place for years.

"We get updates on the fraud hotline regularly," he said. "We get an update on what they've found out about each call and what they've done about it."

Nelson, on the other hand, acknowledged that there had been a history of looking the other way, which may have culminated with the case of former public works manager Carlos Bustamante. Bustamante resigned last year amid sexual harassment allegations and now faces 12 counts of felony sexual harassment, most of which took place in government offices on county time, according to prosecutors.

District Attorney Tony Rackauckas alleges Bustamante preyed on female employees over a period of eight years, and has questioned how the alleged misdeeds continued for so long without any managerial intervention.

Within a week of charges being filed, Bustamante's direct boss was fired. Within a month, county CEO Tom Mauk resigned. The executive under Mauk who oversaw Bustamante's boss was eventually fired and the human resources director also resigned.

"I think in the past year, we've eviscerated that culture, we've gotten rid of a lot of people involved," Nelson said.